Up to 400 Federal Positions May Pay $400,000. 99.6% of Near-$400,000 Salaries Were Medical.

The federal government now has a route to pay as much as $400,000 in basic pay for a limited group of jobs tied to national-security investment. That does not mean 400 employees already make $400,000, or that an ordinary applicant can negotiate a General Schedule offer to that level.

The authority is narrower and more revealing than either interpretation.

On Aug. 26, the Office of Personnel Management made its revised critical position pay rule effective. The rule establishes the top Executive Schedule rate - $253,100 in 2026 - as the normal ceiling and allows higher rates only with the OPM director's written approval, based on evidence that an even higher salary is necessary. A May 29 presidential memorandum separately authorized the use of that system for up to 400 positions, with rates up to $400,000, to support investment programs involving critical minerals, advanced materials and supply chains.

FederalHiringData's analysis of June 2026 personnel records shows how far outside the civilian pay mainstream that ceiling sits. Among 1,062,473 covered employees with reportable annualized adjusted basic pay, the median was $107,411, the 95th percentile was $213,471 and the 99th percentile was $333,244.

Only 3,397 reportable salaries were at least $390,000. Of those, 3,383 - 99.6% - were in a conservative medical grouping based on occupation series or medical pay plans. Just 14 were outside that group. Those existing high salaries largely operate under medical or other special pay systems; they are not evidence that the new critical-position authority has already been used.

That distinction is the central finding. The government has created a larger opening for exceptional investment, engineering, financial and legal talent, but it is opening into territory where nonmedical federal salaries have been almost nonexistent in the public workforce data.

What the $400,000 authority actually does

Critical position pay is not a new grade above GS-15. It is a separate authority in 5 U.S.C. 5377 for positions that require expertise of an extremely high level in a scientific, technical, professional or administrative field and are critical to an agency's mission.

The statute can cover General Schedule positions, Senior Level and scientific or professional positions, members of the Senior Executive Service and certain other OPM-designated categories. Eligibility is only the first gate. An agency must make a position-specific case to OPM.

OPM's request instructions call for the duties and qualifications, the mission consequences of leaving the role unfilled, recruitment or retention history, evidence that other pay flexibilities are inadequate, labor-market comparisons and a proposed rate. An approved rate can be tied to a service agreement. The final rule also makes clear that an agency can reduce or terminate the special rate when the conditions no longer support it, without treating that change as an appealable adverse action in the specified circumstances.

The pay ladder matters. The 2026 cap on ordinary General Schedule pay is $197,200, the rate for Executive Schedule level IV. Critical position pay can reach Executive Schedule level I, $253,100, through the regular statutory process. Going above that level requires written approval from the OPM director, in consultation with the Office of Management and Budget, and evidence supporting the higher amount.

The critical rate is basic pay. OPM says an employee receiving it does not also receive locality pay or a similar basic-pay supplement. It is not a blank check to add $400,000 on top of the rest of a pay schedule.

That makes critical position pay fundamentally different from ordinary offer-setting. An agency can sometimes start a new General Schedule employee above step 1 for superior qualifications or a special agency need. It can use a recruitment incentive, request a special rate or apply an occupation-specific pay system where Congress has authorized one. Those tools can improve an offer, but they do not erase the statutory ceiling attached to the position's pay system.

Critical position pay begins with the position, not the candidate's preferred salary. The agency has to designate the job as critical and obtain OPM approval before the exceptional rate is available. A candidate's private-sector compensation may support the market evidence, but a competing offer by itself does not establish that failure to fill the federal role would seriously impair the mission, that the person has the unusually high expertise required or that less exceptional pay tools have failed.

The sequence protects two different interests. It gives agencies a way to compete when a fixed schedule is demonstrably inadequate. It also prevents the government from turning a narrow authority into ad hoc salary bargaining for any hard-to-fill senior job. The final rule makes the process more flexible than before, but it does not convert the $400,000 maximum into a standard range.

The numerical limits also require care. The statute permits no more than 800 critical-pay positions governmentwide at one time and generally no more than 30 positions that otherwise would be paid under the Executive Schedule. The May memorandum's 400-position authority is a program-specific upper limit inside that broader statute. It does not reserve 400 filled jobs forever, establish 400 current employees or promise $400,000 to everyone selected.

A salary nearly four times the median

FederalHiringData used OPM's June 2026 employment file to compare the new ceiling with the actual reported pay distribution. Annualized adjusted basic pay is closer to the concept in the critical-pay rule than total compensation: it excludes benefits and should not be read as the employee's full economic package.

The latest file contains 1,953,300 covered employees, but pay is reportable for 1,062,473, or 54.4%. The missing 890,827 records include the Defense Department's latest pay submission, so every percentage in this analysis uses the known-pay denominator. It is not a complete payroll census.

Within the reportable group, 475,169 employees were below $100,000; another 522,811 were between $100,000 and $199,999. The population thins quickly above that point. There were 64,493 at or above $200,000, 35,200 at or above $250,000, 17,287 at or above $300,000 and 3,397 at or above $390,000.

The $400,000 ceiling is 3.7 times the reportable median, 87% above the 95th percentile and about 20% above the 99th percentile. Those comparisons do not establish the appropriate salary for any particular expert. They establish rarity.

An agency seeking a rate near the maximum therefore cannot point to the ordinary federal pay distribution as evidence that the amount is routine. It would need to show why the position is critical, why an exceptionally qualified person is necessary, why existing tools are insufficient and why outside market evidence supports the proposed rate.

Medicine already occupies the top of the public pay file

Related research

Put this finding in context

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Historical research/January 10, 2025

Medical Officer Roles Set the Highest Federal Salary Ceilings in Early January 2025

Early January 2025 salary records showed Medical Officer announcements with the highest average salary ceilings among sizable federal occupation series.

Pay and benefits/August 27, 2026

One in Four USAJOBS Announcements Outside Urban Areas Advertised a Hiring Incentive

FederalHiringData found incentive language in 26.43% of exact-location postings outside Census urban areas, versus 17.57% inside them.

The reported tail is not a random sample of executives, attorneys, engineers and technologists. It is overwhelmingly medical.

FederalHiringData classified a record as medical when it used the VM, VN or GP pay plan, or one of six selected medical occupation series: Medical Officer, Nurse, Podiatrist, Dental Officer, Pharmacist or Pharmacy Technician. This deliberately conservative definition avoids classifying every health-related occupation as a clinician.

At $200,000 and above, the file contained 40,119 medical-coded employees and 24,374 others. At $250,000, the counts were 30,245 and 4,955. At $300,000, they were 16,707 and 580. At $390,000, the comparison narrowed to 3,383 and 14.

The leading occupation at that level was Medical Officer, series 0602, with 3,376 employees. The Department of Veterans Affairs accounted for 3,332 of the 3,397 records. That concentration is consistent with the separate pay structure Congress created for VA physicians, dentists and podiatrists under Title 38.

Title 38 pay can combine base, market and performance components under its own rules. VA's published physician, dentist and podiatrist materials describe a $400,000 annual compensation cap, subject to statutory details and specified exceptions. The same dollar figure does not make the two authorities interchangeable.

That is also why a current USAJOBS posting with a $400,000 maximum does not prove critical position pay is operating. As of the production capture on Aug. 30, FederalHiringData found 528 active announcements with annual maximums of at least $390,000. Every one belonged to a medical occupation series: 507 Medical Officer, 11 Dental Officer and 10 Podiatrist announcements. Veterans Health Administration accounted for 494.

FederalHiringData also searched bounded current announcement text and source fields for the literal phrase "critical position pay." It found zero matches. That does not prove no agency has an approved position; an announcement may use different wording, remain unposted or be filled through another process. It does mean the public vacancy evidence does not yet substantiate claims of visible, widespread use.

The authority was rarely used before this expansion

Critical position pay has existed for years. The new rule changes how OPM evaluates requests and removes nonstatutory constraints that had emphasized rare and exceptional cases. The administration's 400-position directive is also much larger than recent practice.

OPM's final rule reports that 60 positions were authorized across 15 agencies in 2024, while seven agencies used the authority for 10 incumbents. In 2025, 65 positions were authorized across 15 agencies, but nine agencies used it for 25 incumbents. A 2017 Government Accountability Office review similarly described critical position pay as the least-used of the broad pay flexibilities it examined, used for as few as seven employees a year during fiscal 2014 through 2016.

The 2026 directive may produce a break from that history. It identifies a concrete workforce mission, permits far more positions and puts a $400,000 ceiling in writing. OPM also estimated that filling 300 positions under its assumptions could add about $44.1 million in annual salary cost, rising to about $58.8 million for 400 positions. Those are regulatory estimates, not enacted spending or a count of approved employees.

The strongest counterargument to skepticism is straightforward: the old usage numbers may reveal a process that was too restrictive for the market problem agencies face. Highly specialized investment professionals, engineers, lawyers and technical leaders can command private-sector compensation well above standard federal ranges. If government must execute complex mineral, financing and supply-chain transactions, leaving a critical role vacant can carry costs that exceed the salary difference.

But a larger ceiling does not eliminate the evidence requirement. It raises the stakes for showing that each exception is necessary and that agencies are not using a headline number as a substitute for position-level market analysis.

Which agencies and jobs are plausible users

The presidential memorandum centers on national-security investment programs. It names work involving critical minerals, advanced materials and secure supply chains. An OPM explanation of the initiative points to the Defense and Commerce departments, the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation and the Export-Import Bank, among other organizations, and identifies investment, engineering, financial and legal expertise.

Those descriptions are clues, not an approved-position list.

The June OPM file counted 610,624 covered Defense employees, including 17,400 in General Engineering, 13,314 in General Business and Industry, 11,945 in Mechanical Engineering, 11,100 in Electronics Engineering and 3,123 attorneys. Defense's June pay fields were absent, so this article does not estimate salaries for those groups.

Commerce had 41,007 covered employees and 40,339 with reportable pay. Its General Attorney series counted 1,469 employees, General Business and Industry 556, Economists 437 and General Engineers 232. The department's reportable average was $129,985 and maximum was $292,300.

The Development Finance Corporation was much smaller: 532 covered employees, including 203 in General Business and Industry, 49 attorneys and 10 economists. Its 521 reportable salaries averaged $162,181 and reached $228,000. The Export-Import Bank had 344 covered employees, including 77 Loan Specialists, 48 in General Business and Industry, 31 attorneys and five economists. Its 337 reportable salaries averaged $155,744 and also reached $228,000.

None of those workers should be treated as a pool of expected critical-pay recipients. Occupation series describe current positions, not the exceptional qualifications of an individual or the mission consequences of a vacancy. The counts simply show where some of the functions named by the administration already sit.

The local data also show the distance an approval might need to bridge. In Commerce, General Engineers averaged $166,645 in reportable adjusted basic pay, attorneys $166,074 and economists $156,440. At the Development Finance Corporation, General Business and Industry employees averaged $171,163 and attorneys $196,082. At the Export-Import Bank, Loan Specialists averaged $166,535 and attorneys $187,102. These are occupation-level averages, not market valuations for the exceptional positions contemplated by the memorandum, and they exclude benefits. Still, a $400,000 rate would be more than a modest adjustment to the existing internal pay structure.

That does not make the rate improper. It makes documentation essential. A persuasive request should connect the proposed salary to a specific external labor market, identify the expertise that cannot be supplied by the existing workforce, explain the consequences of delay and show why a lower rate would not solve the recruitment or retention problem. The public cannot evaluate those judgments from an agency name or occupation code alone.

It is also plausible that the final set extends beyond those organizations. OPM's general critical pay fact sheet gives examples such as cyber and information-technology leaders, chief data officers, advanced research leaders and senior economists. The controlling question is not whether a title sounds important. It is whether the agency can meet the statutory and evidentiary tests.

$400,000 job announcements are not new

The historical USAJOBS archive provides another guard against misreading the policy. Annual advertised maximums near $400,000 appeared well before the May memorandum and August rule.

FederalHiringData counted distinct announcements opened from Jan. 1 through Aug. 30 of each year with annual maximums of at least $390,000. The count was 515 in 2018, 848 in 2024, 1,042 in 2025 and 1,089 in 2026. Of the 2026 announcements, 1,058 listed a maximum of exactly $400,000.

These are announcement ceilings, not payroll salaries, vacancies or hires. One announcement can cover multiple locations or an unspecified number of openings. A maximum is not a promise to the person selected. And because the current cohort is entirely medical by occupation series, the time series should not be presented as evidence that critical position pay caused high-ceiling postings to increase.

Historical source data occasionally contain values above $400,000. FederalHiringData found one such 2026 announcement in the Jan. 1-Aug. 30 archive cohort, while no currently active near-ceiling announcement exceeded $400,000 at capture time. We treated above-cap records as source-data anomalies requiring caution, not as proof of a lawful salary above the cited ceiling.

The archive therefore answers a different question from the personnel file. USAJOBS shows what agencies advertised as a possible maximum; OPM's employment data show reportable adjusted basic pay for covered employees. Neither source currently identifies which 2026 records, if any, use the newly expanded critical-position authority.

What applicants and taxpayers should watch next

For applicants, the practical signal will be unusually specific language about the position's pay authority, qualifications and service requirements. A GS-15 announcement with the ordinary salary table is not transformed into a $400,000 opportunity because the candidate has a competing offer. Superior qualifications, recruitment incentives, special rates and critical position pay are different tools with different legal limits.

For oversight, the most important missing number is actual use. OPM's final rule documents 2024 and 2025 incumbents, but the administration has not yet published a roster of the national-security investment positions approved in 2026, their agencies, occupation series or rates. The May memorandum authorizes up to 400; it does not establish how many requests OPM received, approved, filled or paid at the maximum.

Future reporting can test whether the program remains a small exception or becomes a meaningful recruiting channel. Useful measures include positions requested and approved, time to fill, approved rates, service agreements, retention, agency and occupation, and how often other pay flexibilities were tried first. Public reporting can protect personal privacy while still showing whether the authority is operating as designed.

The new rule solves one part of a real recruiting problem: it makes the government's maximum offer capable of reaching a level that may be credible for a small set of market-facing experts. It does not solve appropriations, hiring speed, security clearances, leadership quality or the difficulty of proving that one exceptional salary produces better public results.

The $400,000 figure will attract attention because it resembles the ceiling already visible in hundreds of medical announcements. The original data show why that resemblance is misleading. Nearly every comparable salary in the public OPM file belonged to medicine, under systems built for a different labor market and public mission.

Critical position pay is better understood as a narrow bridge into territory the nonmedical federal workforce almost never occupies. Whether that bridge carries 400 people, 40 people or far fewer is still unknown.

Methodology and limitations

FederalHiringData captured production USAJOBS data on Aug. 30, 2026 in a read-only transaction. The current Job table contained 113,285 rows and the historical archive contained 2,984,987 announcements with open dates beginning March 1, 2017. The near-ceiling archive analysis counts distinct announcements opened Jan. 1-Aug. 30 of each year with an annual advertised maximum of at least $390,000. The 2018-2026 chart avoids the partial 2017 archive year. Announcements are not vacancies, applications, hires or employees.

The active-announcement analysis used the site's current-status definition and counted 528 annual near-ceiling records. Series 0602, 0680 and 0668 accounted for all 528. A literal search for "critical position pay" across bounded current text and source fields found no matches. Different wording or nonpublic appointments remain possible.

The workforce analysis used OPM's June 2026 normalized employment file in the local FederalHiringData research warehouse. Headcount weights were applied to pay values. Of 1,953,300 covered employees, 1,062,473 had reportable annualized adjusted basic pay and 890,827 did not. June Defense pay was unavailable. Percentiles and threshold shares therefore describe known-pay records, not all covered employees.

Medical-coded means pay plan VM, VN or GP, or occupation series 0602, 0610, 0603, 0680, 0660 or 0668. This grouping is a reproducible analytical definition, not an OPM category. Adjusted basic pay is not total compensation. Advertised salary maximum is not payroll salary.

Policy findings come from 5 U.S.C. 5377, OPM's Aug. 26 final rule and fact sheet, the May 29 presidential memorandum and OPM's request template. GAO supplies historical context. Federal News Network was reviewed as the immediate news hook; primary records control the article's description of authorization versus actual use.

Research, calculations, writing, headline testing and graphics used no OpenAI API calls.

Readers can compare the site's earlier analysis of the highest-paying federal job announcements, read why the GS-15 salary ceiling compresses ordinary federal pay, browse current federal jobs, or explore more FederalHiringData reporting.